


Sometimes, There's Braille On The Ceiling

by MistressGalahat



Series: Twelve Days of Stories [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Matt Murdock vs Happiness, Post-Season/Series 02, Unrequited Love, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8730727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressGalahat/pseuds/MistressGalahat
Summary: Sometimes, there’s braille on the ceiling.Matt can’t see it, but Foggy assures him that it’s there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> On the first day of Christmas  
> my true love sent to me:  
> A Daredevil in a Red Suit

Sometimes, there’s braille on the ceiling.

Matt can’t see it, but Foggy assures him that it’s there.

 

*

 

It takes Frank Castle and Matt being a terrible friend for him to realise that the ceiling was actually the sky. And that Foggy is no longer there to translate the cusps of stardust into something he can read.

Foggy started talking about braille back in their avocado days. When their friendship was tentative and words were new. They had been out drinking till late, stumbling back to their dorm with smiles and drunken giggles, a hand carelessly wrapped around a waist and whispered words that neither would remember come morning.

Part of Matt would remember, but Foggy never seemed to. So he left it alone, and instead he taught Foggy how to read braille in the weak hours of sunlight through ragged curtains. Held his best friend’s hands in his own as he felt for the tips and guided them to the pinprick of words that were his way of learning about the world.

Foggy learned about braille both sober and drunk. Matt preferred him drunk. He allowed himself a few seconds longer of skin contact than he would usually dare, lest he be too bold. For the seconds it made his heart pound and his chest ache, Matt took as many of them as he could.

His friend remained cheerful and unsuspecting of his teaching methods. Foggy left notes on his bed, in his bag and on his desk, all carefully pricked through with an archaic pencil.

A plea for help in regards to grocery shopping. Name suggestions for their practice once they graduated. Tips for flirting with Marci from the dorm next door. An invitation to a Christmas well spend at the Nelson household.

Matt could never say no. Not when Foggy had taken such care and precision in allowing him to read what was on his friend’s mind. And if there were sometimes curled up notes garnered in the smoky depths of his heart, wet patches of salty liquid like stars on paper, then who but Matt would know of their existence?

He sometimes sings in the night when he is certain Foggy is asleep and won’t hear his stunted words and cracking hums. The little confessions mumbled into his pillow can never escape from the imprisonment he has thrown them in, and Matt is okay with that.

Foggy never does learn that he can sing.

Instead, the smoke he exhales from the occasional cigarette always leaves Foggy frowning, and Matt can smell the worry exuding from his friend above the scent of nicotine clinging to him. It is like a wet coat of fur clinging to his skin, a mass of paper mache, stuck like an armour he can never rid himself of.

He knows the armour will stay on for eternity come summer, spring or the end of the world.

And the end of the world does come.

Matt throws himself in with all the women he can manage when the worry in their shared room escalates till it chokes him when he goes to sleep and wakes up. It alleviates some of the pressure, but never all of it. Never enough.

Elektra is the closest he comes to any sort of salvation.

She is bad for him, and he knows it, but for once he lets himself indulge in what he never should have. It starts off well enough, Foggy is pleased for him and Matt can allow himself to be caught up in the storm that she leaves in her wake. It is electrifying for all that her name implies, but Matt enjoys the shock that comes from it.

The steady thump of his heart grows agitated with every mention of her name, anxious and disapproving. It leaves his cheek burnt and his mind torn between two.

In the end, the decision is taken out of his hands, ripped and bloody and torn to shreds like a blue jazz song that leaves only tears. The tears are mixed with dull streets, his feet cold and the concrete proof of his life that has yet again taken a turn down the wrong way.

Elektra didn’t leave him with any means of getting back to his dorm, and there are only poplar trees swaying in the distance. The tears are no map to lead him home, the brick and mortar unfamiliar and blazing hot flames within his mind.

Foggy finds him hours later, soaked to the bone, no longer with tears but as much a heavy heart as when Elektra abandoned him. Matt functions on autopilot for the next many days, partially wishing for her to come back despite the harsh words they exchanged.

Another part is glad for her to be out of his life. The voice in his head sounds like Foggy, so Matt doesn’t object. It doesn’t make the pain any less cruel or intense.

It is after the breakup with Elektra that Foggy drags him out and tells him there is braille on the ceiling. Foggy reads it like he has never read anything else, his heart steady and thrumming in the right way that makes Matt cease his crying. His eyes stay puffy and red, but there is nothing if not hope sparking at his fingertips.

The four letter word starting with an L rests on the tip of his tongue, but Matt hauls it back inside his throat with the force of ferocious tiger. It lies dormant, but never forgotten.

At that point in time, when Foggy ignores his sniffles and keeps reading from that strange braille in the ceiling, Matt knows he will never love someone else as much as he loves Foggy.

He leans closer to the warmth, and Foggy allows him. In another town, on another night, perhaps Matt could have found the courage he lacked. Stick would have been disappointed in him, but the voice of his mentor is thrown out of his head as Foggy’s long hair tickles his exposed shoulder.

They stay together like a symbiotic cell till they should have made it to class, and then some more. Matt is hurting, though with so little actual blood there is no reason for it to smart so badly. Foggy understands and raises Matt’s hand to his heart, lets it sit there for the rest of their bare morning.

It is a bit like reading braille.

Except Matt likes Foggy’s heart better than any sentence of braille he will ever read or come across.

Meeting Claire doesn’t change that fact, but it does make it better, even if for a second of light and happiness in his life. Their brief stint is just as quickly snuffed out as everything else he has ever put his mind to. It starts with a wound and ends with one just as bloody.

They remain friends, and Matt couldn’t be happier about it. The not quite breakup between them is almost mutual. Claire, and her inability to simply be with him, mask and all. And Matt, who can’t see the glances Claire sends him whenever his phone announces an incoming call from Foggy. In the end, Claire is braver than Matt and all of Hell’s Kitchen combined, for letting him go.

It doesn’t make it any easier to keep the whole Mask from Foggy, but it lifts some of the world from his shoulders. Matt wonders if the world is made of marble or concrete, before coming to the conclusion that no matter what the world will always be a heavy thing to lift.

He laughs with Foggy like nothing has changed. The split lips and black eyes barely obscured behind the red lenses of his glasses. His canes get as frequently lost as they usually do, and Foggy cracks a joke how they should report every cane crime they come across.

Karen laughs with them from time to time, a weird article here and a strange cat video that both her and Foggy try to describe to him. The time for laughter grows smaller and smaller with each passing day, and whenever someone dies at the hand of Fisk, it hits them all like a right hook drawing blood.

Nobu is the one to tip the iceberg, and the proverbial ship along with it.

Foggy finds him in his apartment, hurting and bleeding and feeling nine all over again. There are no chemicals in his eyes, but it feels as if he has lost sight of his world and there is no way to fix it.

His best friend leaves, and Matt isn’t sure if they are even still friends. His chest is a knot that won’t unwind despite how he physically tries to pound out the displeasure.

They don’t speak for days, and Karen is left in the dark as to why the two of them has stopped talking. The pain in his chest grows stronger with each passing day, and even phone calls to Claire doesn’t make him feel any better. Karen is the one to find him crying in his office after hours, when Foggy has left for the day with nary a word his way.  
She doesn’t pretend to understand what their fight is about, but she is perceptive, and he suspects she knows exactly why it hurts Matt more than it does Foggy.

Karen knocks their heads together, and after taking down Fisk, Daredevil emerges and Foggy is okay with him again. It won’t ever be the same level of comfort for them, but as long as Matt can have Foggy in his life, then he can deal with it.

Can deal with the muggers and the murderers and the rapists and the criminally insane.

He does all of that until the day Frank Castle emerges and his world is once again plunged into a pitched darkness that leaves his ears ringing and screeching. Frank is not like anyone he has come across, all at once more sane and insane than Stick had ever been.

Matt isn’t there when he needs to be, not for Frank or for Karen or for Foggy. The last one breaks him apart, but he doesn’t have time to recoil from the impact, because Elektra is back and Matt can barely take a breath of air without tasting the acrid scent of roadkill on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. He manages about as well as one could imagine, but it is hard without Foggy there by his side, to pull him through when people around him start dying again.

Karen leaves him behind too, and there isn’t really much that can surprise Daredevil any more. He is done. Karen has a new job, Claire has skipped town after the ninja hospital incident and subsequent cover up, and Foggy…

Well, he tries not to think too hard about Foggy.

Jessica Jones reeks of alcohol, and her heartbeat is irregular. It jumps like a rabbit one second and becomes clad in an iron armour the next. She is by far the least likeable person on their little team, but Matt is willing to put up with her. She has her decent moments, even if they are more often than not anywhere but in Matt’s direction.

Luke has the loudest heartbeat Daredevil has ever heard, and that is one of the first things he blurts out to the man when they meet. Luke is quiet, but Matt dares to think it is because he merely raises an eyebrow before clapping him on the shoulder. It stings for the next few days, but Luke is calm and steady for the most part. It leaves Matt warm and happy. He hasn’t made a new friend in a long while.

Daniel ‘Danny’ Rand is more complex than the other two, but Matt genuinely likes the guy. He reminds him of himself, as how he might have been if he had had any other teacher than Stick. It makes it hard to get along at first, but they throw a few punches every now and then, and the mutual respect between them grows into a fledgling friendship.

They haven’t been a team for long when Daredevil gets hurt in the middle of the night. The Defenders are left to defend their teammate, and somehow Jessica manages to drag all of them to a discreet law firm. She knows one of the top dogs, and assures them all of the safety of the location.

Matt doesn’t have the breath to protest, so he simply doesn’t.

Luke is practically carrying him like a distressed child thrown over their parent’s shoulder. He knew he should have protested coming to a place that could have ties to his life outside of a mask, but his ears are swaying and letting in less sound than they have done in ages.

He frets so much that Luke has to deposit him on the cold floor.

All Matt can smell is turpentine and paper. Expensive cologne and boisterous perfume that makes his nose scrunch and his throat close tight like a string has wound itself around his neck. An undertone of something familiar plays at the edge of his awareness, but Matt dismisses it before he can be thrown into a spiral of unhealthy emotions.  
The last ebb of sound comes when Luke pulls out a phone and calls Claire.

Funny how Matt hasn’t even known the two were familiar with each other. How many things did he not know about his teammates? Was he really that hard to get to know? Was it that hard to be proper friends?

Daredevil is sure that had his eyes been able to perceive light, they would have closed minutes ago out of sheer exhaustion. He is lying on the floor with blood trickling down his fingers, ears stuffed with cotton and balance but a dive down an ocean too far below the surface.

Someone enters the office they are hiding in. The voice is high pitched, and although noise is leaving him with blank holes, it is clearly female and agitated. Jessica tells them off, or so Matt believes, as the extra heartbeat leaves the room. Another heartbeat comes along not too far after, at the same moment that Danny is trying to staunch the heavily bleeding wound in his side.

It is not Claire yet, as both Luke and Jessica square themselves off against this newcomer who thought they could waltz in while one of the Defenders were down.

Jessica is spouting off an onslaught of words to make the person leave, and Luke is clearly ready to throw out the spectator as the air around him shifts and his muscles contract as though he has clenched his fists. There is no waiver or fear.

Danny ignores all of them, even Matt’s squirming, as he does his best at patching up what he can. The youngest of the Defenders whines a protest that Matt can’t comprehend when he tries to pull his dwindling body forward on the slippery floor, because he knows that heartbeat. Knows it better than any other sound in the world, even when the rest of his senses are slowly shutting down on him.

He doesn’t need eyes or sound or smell for this.

He only needs touch and a kind memory.

Foggy, Matt calls out.

Foggy, he says again. Although Matt isn’t sure he actually says it, because there is blood on his lips and his throat hurts.

Some noise must have escaped him, as both Jessica and Luke are nearly physically barreled over by Foggy. Matt believes them to have frozen in surprise at his obvious acknowledgement of this foreign lawyer who he really shouldn’t know the name of.

Daredevil’s hands grab the lapels of Foggy’s jacket and he inhales as much of the familiar scent as he can. Foggy lets him. Pets him lightly on his head as he would have back in their college days when Matt was sick and everything hurt.

Except there is no warm bed, no shared snuggling that Foggy could claim as platonic even when Matt’s heart ached at the word. There is no simplicity, or even something resembling the kinship they once had. Matt had given it all away the first night he had donned the Mask.

He would never regret helping people, but he would regret letting it get between Foggy and his friendship. No one had ever told him that he would have to choose between the two of them, but that was inevidently what had happened.

Part of him wants to think he would have chosen differently, but deep down he knows it would never have been a different outcome.

Matt clutches to Foggy as if his life depends on it, and in a way it does, at least for him. In these few seconds he can pretend he has Foggy again, at least as a friend. He has always wished for more, but simply to have Foggy hold him, to be there with him as he is hurting, is enough for now.

Nothing is right, and nothing is wrong. Nothing is the pounding in his chest as Foggy holds him closer in his arms, blood dripping on his expensive suit, and whispers something that Matt cannot hear. Noise is gone and nothing remains but the beating of a heart Matt knows better than his own.

Foggy will never truly know about him, and if Matt has to die for that to continue, then he is content bleeding out on the floor of Hogarth, Chao & Benowitz with the familiar heart pounding beneath his cheek.

For the first time in a while, both Daredevil and Matt are happy.

If only Foggy would read the braille on the ceiling one more time.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be posting eleven more stories, every second day, the last one on the 24th of December. Different couples, different lengths, different fandoms. Enjoy.


End file.
